The English Paradigm in India Shweta Rao Garg · Deepti Gupta Editors the English Paradigm in India
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The English Paradigm in India Shweta Rao Garg · Deepti Gupta Editors The English Paradigm in India Essays in Language, Literature and Culture Editors Shweta Rao Garg Deepti Gupta DA-IICT Punjab University Gandhinagar, India Chandigarh, India ISBN 978-981-10-5331-3 ISBN 978-981-10-5332-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-5332-0 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017945778 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifcally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microflms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifc statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affliations. Cover design by Samantha Johnson Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore For Dr. Rajyashree Khushu-Lahiri A Friend, Philosopher and Guide PREFACE In Memory of Dr. Rajyashree Khushu-Lahiri (23 June 1959–3 August 2014) Dr. Rajyashree Khushu-Lahiri was a well-known scholar and a devoted teacher. We all remember Dr. Rajyashree Khushu-Lahiri as an energetic, generous and affectionate human being. Her students remember her for providing them with unconditional support and encouragement. To her numerous friends and colleagues, she was a valued companion, loving yet forthright. Her research output is tremendous and surprisingly diverse. As the Head of the Department, she was committed to building the then nascent Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT Ropar. Her untimely death in a car accident in August 2014 came as a cruel shock to all those who knew her. She left a void which is impossible to fll, not only for her family but also for her students, friends and col- leagues. She emphasised hard work, originality and attention to details. She upheld feminist ideals all her life. She had a penchant for learning which never deterred her from exploring new areas. She started off as a student of English, studying the canonical texts of English and American litera- ture. As a graduate student, she was struck by the political contentions of Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, Gayatri Spivak and others thinkers, and thereafter, she forayed into postcolonial literature and criticism. She was concerned about the pedagogic issues in teaching language and com- munication, especially after joining the Department of Humanities and vii viii PREFACE Social Sciences at Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee. Hence, com- munication and ELT became her areas of interest. Further, her interest in communication got her working in pragmatics. The scholarship she left behind is engaging and diverse. The English Paradigm in India: Essays in Language, Literature and Culture is intended to celebrate the woman and the scholar that Dr. Khushu-Lahiri was. This volume seeks to bring out critical essays by people who impacted her work as well as those who were impacted by her. This volume celebrates the ideas she cherished and diverse method- ologies she abided by and worked with during her career. This volume is Gedenkschrift by her friends and students to honour the work she has done, and that she could have done. We are deeply indebted to Prof. Somdeb Lahiri and Prof. B.N. Patnaik for mentoring this book. We acknowledge Prof. Akshaya Kumar from Panjab University; Dr. Anshu Kujur from Miranda House, Delhi; and Dr. Hem Raj Bansal from Central University of Himachal for their valuable inputs. We would also like to thank the students Samriddhi Simlai, Dwimitra Chauhan and Rudra Chandak from DA-IICT for their support. Gandhinagar, India Shweta Rao Garg Chandigarh, India Deepti Gupta CONTENTS 1 Introduction 1 Shweta Rao Garg and Deepti Gupta 2 Comparative Literature in India in the Twenty-frst Century 7 Avadhesh Kumar Singh 3 Confronting the Canon Contrapuntally: The Example of Edward Said 31 Fakrul Alam 4 Debating, Challenging or Accepting Patriarchy? Assessing Indian Women’s Role in Society and Creative Writing 49 Somdatta Mandal 5 Social Imagination and Nation Image: Exploring the Sociocultural Milieu in Regional Indian Short Stories Translated in English 73 Ishmeet Kaur Chaudhry ix x CONTENTS 6 Idli, Dosai, Sambar, Coffee: Consuming Tamil Identity 91 G.J.V. Prasad 7 Curfewed Night in Elsinore: Vishal Bhardwaj’s Haider 101 Shormishtha Panja 8 Interrogating Gendered Spirituality in Phaniyamma and The Saga of South Kamrup 111 Jaiwanti Dimri 9 Resisting Patriarchy Without Separatism: A Re-Reading of Shashi Deshpande’s The Dark Holds No Terrors 125 Suraj Gunwant and Rashmi Gaur 10 Cultural Assimilation and the Politics of Beauty in Postwar American Fiction by Ethnic Women Writers 139 Nilanjana Ghosal and Srirupa Chatterjee 11 Agha Shahid Ali and Contemporary World Poetry 153 M.L. Raina 12 Critique of Normality in Cormac McCarthy’s Suttree 167 Sanjoy C K and Gurumurthy Neelakantan 13 The Personal Is Political: Slavery, Trauma, and the White Man’s Legacy 185 Lekha Roy 14 Women in Diaspora, Stranded on the No-Man’s Land: A Study of Selected Works of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni 197 Deepti Gupta and Sumeet Brar 15 Food Images and Identity in the Selected Writings of Three Indian American Women Writers 205 Shweta Rao Garg CONTENTS xi 16 Resistance, Resilience, Survival: Role of Family and Community in Jack Davis’s No Sugar 215 Hem Raj Bansal 17 Mediation of Multimodal Word Literature and Indirect Translation: Analysing The Adventures of Tintin 233 Urjani Chakravarty 18 Institutional Discourses, Technology-Mediated Practices and Pedagogy: A Critical Perspective 243 Atanu Bhattacharya and Preet Hiradhar 19 Building Reputational Bridges Over Crises Situations 265 Asha Kaul and Avani Desai 20 Observations on an Instance of Negative Interaction in Sarala Mahabharata 285 B.N. Patnaik Bibliography 293 Index 313 EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS About the Editors Shweta Rao Garg is an Assistant Professor of English at Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information Communication Technology (DA-IICT), Gandhinagar. A former Fulbright Doctoral Fellow (at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign) and Sahitya Akademi Translation Prize win- ner, she is also a creative writer and an artist. Her research interests include performance studies, gender studies and postcolonial literature. She con- ducts workshops on creative writing, theatre and gender sensitization. Deepti Gupta is a Professor of English and Dean International Students at Panjab University, Chandigarh. She has more than thirty years of experience in teaching and research with several national and interna- tional publications in ELT, linguistics and literature. She is a teacher trainer who regularly works with RELO, IDP and the British Council. Contributors Fakrul Alam is Professor of English at the University of Dhaka. His publications include: Rabindranath Tagore and National Identity Formation in Bangladesh: Essays and Reviews (Dhaka: Bangla Academy, 2013); the Essential Tagore (Boston: Harvard UP and Viswa Bharati: xiii xiv EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS Kolkata, 2011; with Radha Chakravarty); Imperial Entanglements and Literature in English (writer’s ink: Dhaka, 2007); South Asian Writers in English (Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2006); Jibanananda Das: Selected Poems (Dhaka: University Press Limited, 1999); Bharati Mukherjee (Twayne’s United States Authors Series. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1995). His translation of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s Unfnished Memoirs was published in 2012 by University Press in Bangladesh, Penguin Books in India and Oxford University Press in Pakistan. He received the SAARC Literature Award 2012 given at the SAARC Literature Festival of 2012 held at Lucknow, India, on 18 March 2012. He was awarded the Bangla Academy Puroshkar (literature award) in the translation cat- egory for 2013 on 24 February 2013. Ocean of Sorrow, his translation of the late nineteenth-century Bengali epic narrative, Bishad Sindhu by Mir Mosharraf Hussain, published by Bangla Academy in November 2016 is his most recent publication. Hem Raj Bansal has been working as Assistant Professor of English in the Department of English and European Languages at Central University of Himachal Pradesh, Dharamshala. He has presented many research papers at national and international seminars. Having more than ffteen papers to his credit, he has worked for his Ph.D. thesis on Australian Aboriginal drama. His areas of specialisation/interest include Dalit literature, modern Indian/European drama, immigrant and dias- pora writings, Australian Aboriginal literature, postcolonial literature and Indo-Canadian drama. He got the Best Research Paper Award at national conference organised by JCDAV College, Dasuya, Punjab, in 2015. He has also been awarded the one-month-long fellowship by Forum on Contemporary Theory in 2009. Atanu Bhattacharya is Professor in the Centre for English Studies at Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar, India. His research interests include technology, English language, and culture studies and their inter- actions with pedagogy. He is also an amateur theatre enthusiast. Sumeet Brar is presently serving as Assistant Professor (English) at S.C.D.